Top plate thickness

[fema]

Hi All,

i am trying to copy the strad hubermann. I have until now tried making uniform thickness.

My top feels pretty flexibile , but only no so in the middle , because it is litte bit to thick. But it weights totally 75 gram.

 

Do you think it is safe to take away material?, because as an indicator, the desired weight is arround 65 gram for a finished top?

I am sorry for my bad english, i had an stroke in my brain last year, so it is hard to make my self clear.

 

[Davide Sora]

It would be quite risky to give advice based only on a photo with numbers. Furthermore, every luthier has different opinions and could give different answers. That said, in general, 75 grams is a bit too much for me, but to get a precise idea, I would need to know at least the wood's density and the M5 frequency. I assume the grain and fiber orientation of the piece and the arching are correct, although it may not be at all obvious, because I don't know your skill and experience as a maker. 

Just curious, where did you get 65g as the desired weight? Is this referring to the weight of the original Hubermann top? And then, does this weight refer to the finished top with f-holes and bassbar?

 

[fema]

I don't know about the wood density, i didnt measure to be honest,i'm still learning and a real beginner,but the m5, i can meassure i think, But 65 gram, it was in general,i read it on several websites.

[Davide Sora]

6 minutes ago, fema said:

 But 65 gram, it was in general,i read it on several websites.

The same fundamental question remains: does the 65g refer to a finished top with F-holes and bassbar, without bassbar but with F-holes, or without either F-holes and bassbar? These are crucial differences that could lead to dangerous misunderstandings if left unspecified.

[Michael Darnton]

You've already messed up going thin so close to the upper block. That's a spot that critical for supporting neck pull and you put a stress riser right where the stress concentrates. Your grad pattern is classic 1900 German factory at this point, anyway, pretty much backwards from the best old Italians, definitely not close to uniform thickness and no longer can be made that way. 

If this is your first, I'd just plow one and get it done, and the next will be better. I've always told my students that the first is where all the problems emerge and you just have to get past that point and learn from it. [Save the good wood until you've made a few, too!]

[Don Noon]

I'll agree with Michael on this; it's already too thin in some spots where it should be thicker... but for a first violin, it is probably best to keep going.  You could probably thin out the areas in the middle to 3mm or less.

You need to get better control of your graduation process, the variations look very wide and unintentional.  

The weight and M5 taptone combination that you can achieve depend a lot on the wood you started with.  Here is a chart with F-holes cut and no bass bar, with data from a few Strads and the rest from me and some other decent makers.  The "inexpensive factory made" are junkers that I regraduated, and it's apparent that the stiffness/density of that wood prevents getting into the M5/weight range of the others.  The blue lines are approximately way the M5 will decrease as you decrease the weight of the plate.

[Shunyata]

Yes, regarding too thin near the top block!  I made this mistake with my first viola and the fingerboard projection dropped like crazy after a year.  Really no way to fix it now.

But don’t worry about it.  You will make many mistakes on your first violin.  That is part of the journey! 

[Will Turner]

7 hours ago, fema said:

I am sorry for my bad english, i had an stroke in my brain last year, so it is hard to make my self clear.

 

Did you develop the desire to make violins after your stroke?   The reason I ask is that I had a stroke August of 2023 and during my recovery journey I developed an intense desire to make violins.

I wish you the best and likewise for a continued recovery.  Don’t let the first instrument be your last.  My first couple were also very much just learning/practicing.   The one I left way to thick, I use for practicing opening and practicing repair techniques.

[jacobsaunders]

My experience after decades of repairing old violins (including good ones) is that many old violins are about 3,5mm in the middle, and 2,5mm around the edges. If you do that, you certainly aren’t wrong and needn’t worry about it

[Justin Allen]

From the image alone, I can't really advise on how much further to continue. What I would say is that you can always remove more wood later, but putting it back is not very feasible.

One thing I've learned-and am still learning-is that weight and thickness are moving targets. They depend on so many factors that following a single weight or thickness map doesn't necessarily result in a great-sounding instrument for me.

For example, early on I copied the Rode Stradivari 1715, which the top gets very, very thin in places. I followed it exactly and ended up with a violin that sounded shrill, almost cat-like. It was a disappointing experiment, but I learned a lot from it.

At this point, I've come to realize there is still a lot that I don't know.

My advice would be to leave it a little thicker and see what happens. You can always re-graduate it later.

[fema]

18 hours ago, Michael Darnton said:

You've already messed up going thin so close to the upper block. That's a spot that critical for supporting neck pull and you put a stress riser right where the stress concentrates. Your grad pattern is classic 1900 German factory at this point, anyway, pretty much backwards from the best old Italians, definitely not close to uniform thickness and no longer can be made that way. 

If this is your first, I'd just plow one and get it done, and the next will be better. I've always told my students that the first is where all the problems emerge and you just have to get past that point and learn from it. [Save the good wood until you've made a few, too!]

Hi, thank you for responding, what is to thin? because the place were the upperblock comes (the flat part) is around 4mm, the other meassurements are as  shown (2 - 2.3).Thanks again for you answer  

[fema]

15 hours ago, Will Turner said:

Did you develop the desire to make violins after your stroke?   The reason I ask is that I had a stroke August of 2023 and during my recovery journey I developed an intense desire to make violins.

I wish you the best and likewise for a continued recovery.  Don’t let the first instrument be your last.  My first couple were also very much just learning/practicing.   The one I left way to thick, I use for practicing opening and practicing repair techniques.

Yes sort of, i have more desire then ever before. But i started years ago. I will continue until my lights are going out.But thank you, and recovery goes slowly, but ok

[fema]

19 hours ago, Davide Sora said:

The same fundamental question remains: does the 65g refer to a finished top with F-holes and bassbar, without bassbar but with F-holes, or without either F-holes and bassbar? These are crucial differences that could lead to dangerous misunderstandings if left unspecified.

No, the 65 is in general ,this info came from internet / google, and the 65 refers to a completed top, bassbar included and f holes cut out.

[fema]

19 hours ago, Michael Darnton said:

You've already messed up going thin so close to the upper block. That's a spot that critical for supporting neck pull and you put a stress riser right where the stress concentrates. Your grad pattern is classic 1900 German factory at this point, anyway, pretty much backwards from the best old Italians, definitely not close to uniform thickness and no longer can be made that way. 

If this is your first, I'd just plow one and get it done, and the next will be better. I've always told my students that the first is where all the problems emerge and you just have to get past that point and learn from it. [Save the good wood until you've made a few, too!]

Hi, thank you for responding, what is to thin? because the place were the upperblock comes (the flat part) is around 4mm, the other meassurements are as  shown (2 - 2.3).Thanks again for you answer  

[MikeC]

I don't think 2 to 2.3 is too thin,  on mine, it's an average of about 2.5, may be thinner or thicker in some places, gets a bit thicker near the end blocks.  

[Davide Sora]

2 hours ago, fema said:

No, the 65 is in general ,this info came from internet / google, and the 65 refers to a completed top, bassbar included and f holes cut out.

With your top weighing 75g at that point in the process, the chances of getting to 65g with the finished top with f-holes and bassbar are so slim that I would ignore that number. Looking at your thickness map, if the M5's frequency wasn't already too low, I would thin all points currently at 3.5/4.0 mm, excluding the Cs area outside the F-holes and the areas facing the top and bottom blocks. Then I would cut the F-holes and evaluate whether to thin them further to reduce the weight, assuming the mass-to-stiffness ratio indicated by the frequencies wasn't already too low.

High thickness combined with excessive weight isn't ideal in my opinion. High rigidity combined with low mass would be ideal; thickness is simply a consequence, not a set of numbers to be respected.

 

[gorge riam]

A weight reduction from 75 to 65g would mean an average thickness reduction of at least 14%. Assuming an average thickness of 2.8 the thickness would have to be reduced by 0.4 mm on average. Or is my conclution wrong?

[Michael Darnton]

@fema According to what you are saying and the measurements your block area is 4 mm and then immediately off the block it becomes 2 mm almost instantly. From the pressure of the neck this is one of the most stressed areas on the entire body and you have concentrated all of the pull of the neck on a piece of soft wood that's 2 mm thick.

If it's on the rising part of the arch, it's also all short length stacked end grain which is very weak.

As @Shunyata has commented the first thing that will probably happen is your neck will drop and may continue to do that throughout its life. The second thing which I have seen far too much of is that a crack may develop across the grain in this area if there's any weakness in the wood or if the instrument receives an impact somewhere. This week spot also has some significant negative tonal ramifications.

The bottom line is it's one of the worst spots to have the top be this thin.

[Don Noon]

6 hours ago, fema said:

Hi, thank you for responding, what is to thin? because the place were the upperblock comes (the flat part) is around 4mm, the other meassurements are as  shown (2 - 2.3).Thanks again for you answer  

The longitudinal arch slopes down to the block, and that slope means that the long grain is cut, therefore structurally weak.  It needs to be thick in the sloped area as you approach the block, in order to avoid neck instability... not just AT the block. Like Micheal said (I started writing before his post appeared).

2 hours ago, gorge riam said:

A weight reduction from 75 to 65g would mean an average thickness reduction of at least 14%. Assuming an average thickness of 2.8 the thickness would have to be reduced by 0.4 mm on average. Or is my conclution wrong?

65/75x2.8 = 2.43mm   But that's incomplete and misleading math.

A significant area is places you don't want to make thinner... around the edges and blocks.  So then you'd need to go thinner elsewhere, if weight was your only goal, which it shouldn't be.

Assume you want 65 g with bar, which might be 60 g for the plate without the bar.  To be in a reasonable stiffness zone according to the chart I posted earlier, you'd ALSO want the M5 to be 300 Hz at the absolute minimum, and prefereably above 310 Hz.  You need to check both weight and stiffness while thinning, and use both to decide where to stop.  I agree with Davide that thickness is a consequence, but I tend to balk at going below 2 mm.

[gorge riam]

@Don Noon...A significant area is places you don't want to make thinner.

Right, therefore the thickness reduction would even be much more to achieve the 14% weight reduction (without considering the drop in M5).

[HoGo]

We didn't see the outside, the edges may be overly bulky not rounded and even not trimmed for uniform overhang. Many makers leave carving the final depth of channeling towards end of carving. That may reduce the weigth by few grams.

[fema]

On 6/22/2026 at 3:55 PM, Shunyata said:

Yes, regarding too thin near the top block!  I made this mistake with my first viola and the fingerboard projection dropped like crazy after a year.  Really no way to fix it now.

But don’t worry about it.  You will make many mistakes on your first violin.  That is part of the journey! 

To understand you right and correctly, can tell me, on how much mm around the corner block it has to be? on average? what is a minimum to be safe, and around which area ? like 5 cm from the corner block 2,4 mm? or? , sorry i have to visualise things now since i had the stroke.

 

Many thanks for your help!

[fema]

4 hours ago, Michael Darnton said:

@fema According to what you are saying and the measurements your block area is 4 mm and then immediately off the block it becomes 2 mm almost instantly. From the pressure of the neck this is one of the most stressed areas on the entire body and you have concentrated all of the pull of the neck on a piece of soft wood that's 2 mm thick.

If it's on the rising part of the arch, it's also all short length stacked end grain which is very weak.

As @Shunyata has commented the first thing that will probably happen is your neck will drop and may continue to do that throughout its life. The second thing which I have seen far too much of is that a crack may develop across the grain in this area if there's any weakness in the wood or if the instrument receives an impact somewhere. This week spot also has some significant negative tonal ramifications.

The bottom line is it's one of the worst spots to have the top be this thin.

ok,i understand, but from a hubermann perspective, and i know, it depends onm different factors, but i i check the meassurements on lets say the hubermann, i see thicknesses vary from 2.1 2,4 mm around the corner block? so what would a minimum be then? and i keep  it;s flexibility in mind etc etc.

[fema]

1 hour ago, HoGo said:

We didn't see the outside, the edges may be overly bulky not rounded and even not trimmed for uniform overhang. Many makers leave carving the final depth of channeling towards end of carving. That may reduce the weigth by few grams.

the first image, ik looks like it bend strange or it has no nice arch from the middle towars the end(top)

[Andreas Preuss]

On 6/22/2026 at 9:42 AM, fema said:

i am trying to copy the strad hubermann.

Why? 

It seems to me that many beginning makers get caught by the idea to 'copy' a famous instrument named XYZ.

Somehow this looks like trying to play Wieniawsky concerto without  being prepared with the right etudes to be able to do so. When Antonio Stradivari made the Hubermann he had already over 40 years of experience as a maker.

Just a strad violin school model is good enough. Its important to train your hands until you don't need to think about the single steps any more. Its just like knowing on a manual car the gears and all the other functions without thinking about it.

Getting advice from experienced drivers (as you do here) is certainly always good.